Upgrade of LHC underway paving way for new discoveries

(Phys.org) —The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been shut down so that it can be upgraded, a process that is expected to take at least two years. Researchers on the project hope the upgrade will allow the facility to reach its full potential which was reduced following an accident that occurred shortly after the collider begin operating back in 2008.

The LHC was constructed over the years 1998 to 2008 with the hope of allowing scientists a means of proving many of the theories related to the Standard Model. One of those, the discovery of what appears to be the Higgs Boson, occurred just last year. But scientists want to know more about the tiny particles that are thought to make up all matter, including the kind that can't be see—so-called dark matter which currently is still a theory because no one has been able to devise a way to make it show itself. Researchers are hoping this new upgrade to the largest collider in the world will not only help prove that dark matter exists, but offer a way for physicists to create some for themselves.

The upgrade, which is projected to cost U.S. $105 million, will involve replacing approximately 10,000 connections between sections of the collider and adding 5,000 insulation systems. Part of the upgrade will also include tests of the system—over 10,000 to ensure there are no leaks, and another 18,000 to prove the correctness of the electrical system. All of the magnets in the system will also be tested and if necessary, they will be replaced. The upgrade is expected to double the power of the LHC, allowing for collisions that were supposed to take place at the facility nearly five years ago. Shortly after turning the system on an electrical fault occurred that resulted in liquid helium rushing into the underground tunnels where the collider resides—it left the system damaged and unable to operate at full capacity.

Scientists are hoping once the upgrade is complete and the system turned back on that they will be able to prove that theories regarding supersymmetry are correct. Part of that process will involve looking for other particles, perhaps even other types of Higgs Bosons.

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25 comments

Shortly after turning the system on an electrical fault occurred that resulted in liquid helium rushing into the underground tunnels where the collider resides—it left the system damaged and unable to operate at full capacity.

What happened to the sensors for your sensors, and sensors for your indicator lights, and indicator lights for your indicator lights, etc, like NASA does for space flight?!

The LHC was constructed over the years 1998 to 2008 with the hope of allowing scientists a means of proving many of the theories related to the Standard Model. One of those, the discovery of what appears to be the Higgs Boson, occurred just last year. But scientists want to know more about the tiny particles that are thought to make up all matter, including the kind that can't be see—so-called dark matter which currently is still a theory because no one has been able to devise a way to make it show itself.

Unfortunately up to now scientists still do not know about the philosophical idea of any tiny particles that are thought to make up all matter, such as what the electron is! Maybe this simple physical view could help us to understand it.http://www.vacuum...=9〈=en

Stupid money drains... they still don't understand it's fractal and they're still searching for the "smallest" so called particle.

Well, at least to prove it's fractal they still have to drain the money to do this. Unless you have any other proof of your assertion. And even if it's fractal, they are hunting for building blocks at the level we can access the microscopic world. Maybe we shouldn't have built microscopes to discover bacteria and unicellular organisms given your comment.

Shortly after turning the system on an electrical fault occurred that resulted in liquid helium rushing into the underground tunnels where the collider resides—it left the system damaged and unable to operate at full capacity.

What happened to the sensors for your sensors, and sensors for your indicator lights, and indicator lights for your indicator lights, etc, like NASA does for space flight?!

What happened is what NASA calls a Criticality One fault. No redundancy possible, and a failure destroys the mission (and probably a lot of expensive equipment).

In this case what happened was a fault in a superconducting connection. It tested perfect at low power, but when the current got high enough, it switched to normal conduction. All the power in the (huge) magnet dissipated in an extremely small area. (Read explosion.) This sprayed liquid Helium through the tunnel on lots of things not intended for cryogenic operation...

Stupid money drains... they still don't understand it's fractal and they're still searching for the "smallest" so called particle.

Well, at least to prove it's fractal they still have to drain the money to do this. Unless you have any other proof of your assertion. And even if it's fractal, they are hunting for building blocks at the level we can access the microscopic world. Maybe we shouldn't have built microscopes to discover bacteria and unicellular organisms given your comment.

You don't have to built gigantic accelerators to prove it's fractal, actually it's very easy. But the main problem is that most science tries to isolate every system it examinates. They should not be trying to find smaller and smaller building blocks, because it's infinite, but rather define the fundamental pattern of division. From infinitely large to infinitely small, and when we've done that we can understand that "small" and "large" has no meaning until you relate something to another.

The only thing I know of that's always the same in physics, as far as anyone knows anyway, are the inverse square law and the definition of basic geometric terms, such as circle, sphere, and pi.

These are the only things which always follow the same relationship at any scale.

Everything is fractal in the sense that circular and elliptical orbits following the inverse square law are observed at every level of reality thus observed, but I've never seen some standard metric of transitioning from one scale to the next.

antialias, it's difficult to stick to a common definition since our language is subject to interpretation in many cases. I would like to answer both you and lurker but this box isn't large enough and I'm not the best person to do that either. I recomend you to check out Nassim Haramein's work, search youtube or go to www.theresonanceproject.org to read papers etc. It is quite extraordinary and makes a lot of sense. One thing I can say for sure right here Lurker, is that mathematical scale constants remain very exact at all scales, and it's not only the inverse square law. So do yourself a very good favour by examining his work :) Good day.

Furthermore, calculations were rendered to describe the collective and coherent behavior of the plasma dynamics of ergospheres orbiting the event horizons of black holes demanding a highly structured polarized vacuum, resulting in an alternative view of black holes where the exterior white hole portion surrounds the interior black hole singularity.

Zephyr explains it much better, and ya don't have to out of your way to find it. Hoooweee, I just thought of something,, Hey Zeph, if ya are reading this,,, how about making a couple of youtube lectures for us. I would love to see a couple.

it's difficult to stick to a common definition since our language is subject to interpretation in many cases.

Then make up your own word and use it. No problem with that. But don't do what you always do: use a word that sounds scientific to try and lend credibility (by association) to your crackpot ideas. It just keeps making you look like a used-car-salesman trying a sales pitch for hours and hours without realizing that we see through that tripe in less than 5 seconds.

Sort of sad to watch, really.

is that mathematical scale constants remain very exact at all scales

Remember Galilei? He wrote abook in which he set forth the law of falling bodies (considered one of his greatest achievements). The book is called: "On TWO new sciences" - the second one was that stuff is NOT scale invariant. He considered this insight (and demonstration thereof) every bit as important as the first one (and rightly so)

Remember Galilei? He wrote abook in which he set forth the law of falling bodies (considered one of his greatest achievements). The book is called: "On TWO new sciences" - the second one was that stuff is NOT scale invariant. He considered this insight (and demonstration thereof) every bit as important as the first one (and rightly so)

One of the giants that Newton stood on to see further. I have always thought that his work on linear ratios was one of his most important. Copernicus and Kepler had laid to rest the geocentric thing without his help. But in material ratios and scales, he could be called the father of modern statics engineering.

My spoken English is even worse, than this written one. I'd rather draw some picture for you, OK?

Naa, I wouldn't worry about losing anything in the language,,, I was hoping that we could actually watch ya working at the whiteboard, marker in hand, drawing diagrams of the analogies, while lecturing on the AWT. Do ya pace when ya lecture? All my favorite professors did.

Furthermore, calculations were rendered to describe the collective and coherent behavior of the plasma dynamics of ergospheres orbiting the event horizons of black holes demanding a highly structured polarized vacuum, resulting in an alternative view of black holes where the exterior white hole portion surrounds the interior black hole singularity.

Zephyr explains it much better, and ya don't have to out of your way to find it. Hoooweee, I just thought of something,, Hey Zeph, if ya are reading this,,, how about making a couple of youtube lectures for us. I would love to see a couple.

Are you sure that's not Zephyr? Zeph, that's not where you get your stuff is it? Holy word-spaghetti!

@Lurker: Mostly it is a result of the US stopping the SSC. LHC had to be cheaper, so reuse tunnels, so more evolved magnets (larger curvature, so smaller focal radius). Complicated stuff that strain current assembly technology tend to ... blow up!

@vm: Scientists do science, not philosophy. That is why they have results, you have bunkum.

@ant: That is news to us who have seen the Higgs field observed.

@arc: Cosmologists can assess entropy of the observable universe*, and it turns out that the standard particles is the lowest level (whether they secretly are strings or not), you run out of degrees of entropy freedom for yet another level of objects. No fractals for you!

*One way is to ask how much entropy you get if you throw everything into a black hole.

Shortly after turning the system on an electrical fault occurred that resulted in liquid helium rushing into the underground tunnels where the collider resides—it left the system damaged and unable to operate at full capacity.

There are a lot of sensors, however there may have been a delay with sensors used to measure Oxygen depletion caused by Helium leakage. Certain types of electrochemical sensors use a capilliary which is dependent on the concentration of Oxygen, but give a higher signal in the presence of Helium. A better E/C sensor to use is a solid membrane type which operates by diffusion and is not affected by Helium. We discovered this at the SLAC Jefferson Lab.

Not many people can get: "white holes", "ergospheres", "structured polarized vacuum", "black holes", "plasma dynamics", "event horizon", "coherent", "collective", "interior" AND "exterior",,,, all into one sentence.

Personally, I go for the "postmodern essay generator".http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/(reload the page to have a new essay generated fom scratch. Brilliant piece of software. If you post one of these out of context somewhere it takes a lot of people quite some time to catch on that these are algorithmically generated and make absolutely no sense at all)

I think Zeph just found a site that does similar stuff for physics papers and thinks they're real.

"The snarXiv is a ran­dom high-energy the­ory paper gen­er­a­tor incor­po­rat­ing all the lat­est trends, entropic rea­son­ing, and excit­ing mod­uli spaces. The arXiv is sim­i­lar, but occa­sion­ally less ran­dom."

(reload the page to have a new essay generated fom scratch. Brilliant piece of software. If you post one of these out of context somewhere it takes a lot of people quite some time to catch on that these are algorithmically generated and make absolutely no sense at all)

Bwaaahaahaaaa

This is no different from any such philo products which have always been generated in much the same way.